Landing the Job

It’s early afternoon as I open my laptop. These days it’s always afternoon, because in my depressive state sleep always feels so good, and the day so full of overwhelming obstacles. I’ve been unemployed for the past eight months after 23 years at Microsoft, Facebook, and most recently, Audere, a nonprofit I founded and led as CEO until the day I decided my depression wasn’t getting any better unless I eliminated some source of stress in my life, the main one of which at the time seemed to be work. I’d find myself genuinely surprised months later to discover the depression hadn’t subsided, and that I had made a fundamental attribution error in assuming work stress was causing the depression. It turns out that a great formula for deepening depression is to have no work and no purpose at all.

For weeks I’ve been mulling over getting a job at Amazon. Not just any job — and certainly not a software job, much less one leading software teams. I wanted a job that forced me to wake up at the same time every day, a job where days weren’t filled with questions that needed answering, decisions that Top Management needed to make, but instead with commands directing my every action, commands that relieved me from the weight of indecision and the constant dread of time — life — being wasted. I needed someone to distill the insistent demands of consumers worldwide into mandatory actions; actions which, if not performed, would lead to products — all important, how-will-my-son’s-Christmas-be-without-this, what-if-he-brings-this-up-in-therapy-when-he’s-forty-five sort of products — to arrive in two days instead of the much-touted one. And for this, there was none better than Amazon.

I must have bought tens of thousands of dollars of items from them over the last twenty years. This year alone, I’ve ordered 125 separate times from Amazon (as of December 12th) — and I’m not even the one who buys the most from them in our family; my wife is. We’ve owned more Kindles than we have family members, and currently operate a cacophony of five Echoes throughout our house. I’ve been a customer for so long, I remember when Amazon’s logo was a big A with a river running through it. Back before the dot com era, there was even one Christmas where Amazon sent all its customers a blue plastic Amazon cup. I loved that cup. I felt proud to be an early believer. I was not only what the industry would call a whale, an abnormally large spender; I was also the quintessential fanboy. Amazon’s based in Seattle; I’m based in Seattle. A job there seemed the perfect fit.

Welcome to Peak Salvation. Today’s episode: Landing the Job.

It’s not the first time I’ve thought of this. 12 years ago, I applied to be a software development manager in Amazon’s RCX team. I don’t remember what RCX stood for… perhaps Retail Customer Experience? The team managed the main product page, the one with specifications, customer reviews, and the Buy Now button. But of late, my thoughts have been around a different type of job at Amazon. I wanted to experience what it’s like to work not as a salaried employee in one of its upscale Seattle buildings downtown, but as one of its overwhelming majority of workers, in a warehouse on an hourly wage testing the farthest reaches of OSHA’s bailiwick.

I load up the Amazon warehouse jobs page and am greeted with a thrilling video, complete with inspiring music, sweeping overhead drone shots of the warehouse, and a diverse cast of workers, what Amazon calls “associates,” replete with full Bob The Builder safety gear — reflective vests, protective eyewear, COVID-inspired face masks — eager to start each day. It was Reagan vs. Gorbachev. It was morning again in America. I couldn’t wait to get started.

[Upbeat music from video] The title scrolls past as your heartbeat syncs to the upbeat music of the recruiting video, “What It’s Like to be a Fulfillment Center Warehouse Associate.” Bold text informatively declares, “There are 4 types of jobs you would do at a fulfillment center.”

“I am inbound stow.” Job #1: stowing inbound items. “I basically scan products and put them into the pods.” The video shows shelves of yellow bins stacked neatly on top of each other, each labeled with cryptic codes like “4G”. Pausing the video like the curious geek I am, it appears that the number in each label indicates its column, in increasing order from left to right. Letters appear to start from A near the floor and advance as you go upward. This strikes me as counterintuitive, and I find myself wondering how high the bins go, and whether Amazon’s fancy machine learning has determined some optimal height that accounts for the median height of its associates coupled with perhaps their arm length and maybe even their shoe size, which would account for tip-toeing. Or perhaps I’m overthinking the whole endeavor. But I suspect not — at the volumes of products that Amazon processes every day, even through this one warehouse alone, I’m pretty sure big decisions — important decisions which made some careers and broke others — were made about the optimum height of the topmost bin, about the seemingly backwards labeling that starts Bin A at the bottom and not at the top. I mentally brace myself to be the fastest employee to be able to recite the first half of the alphabet backwards. I’m determined to be great at this.

“We have robots.” YES! “Robots come up to the stowers… they just keep going in a cycle.” Stacks of aforementioned yellow bins slide past each other in a symphony of efficiency. This is what I came for! My brief reverie is interrupted by huge block letters: EVERY BUILDING IS DIFFERENT. I steel myself for the information content that must surely follow such an aphorism. NOT ALL FULFILLMENT CENTERS HAVE ROBOTICS. Nooo! But surely my ”fulfillment center,” the Seattle warehouse, the one based in the same city as Amazon’s headquarters, would have the most advanced experimental technology with lasers, infrared sensors, the smartest, sassiest AI voices? I really hope so.

“When the order comes up for the picker” — that’s Job #2 of 4: The Picker — “that bin lights up, just reach in there and grab it right out.” So it turns out all my worrying about memorizing the alphabet in reverse was unfounded. Our robot overlords would take all the thinking, or should I say, all the mistaking, out of the process. “Packing the order, you put the items into the box, which goes right into Shipping” — Jobs 3 and 4, Packing and Shipping. “When the cage is full, can you imagine how many customer orders you have in there?” I didn’t exactly expect the word cage, but her enthusiasm is positively palpable. I can’t imagine how many! “And that’s exciting.” It is.

The video transitions quickly as block letters once again adorn the screen: SAFETY. “They’ve made plenty of changes in the building to keep us safe…” I wonder what the building was like before, but I’m glad it’s better now. “They want you coming in and going back the same way.” I like that. Returning from work in the evening the same way I left in the morning. This is no Fantine from Les Mis — I’m going to eat dinner with my family after an honest day’s work with all my teeth. It’s interesting that all the “associates” refer to the company — the people making safety changes, the people who want you to keep all ten fingers, all ten toes — as “they.” It’s like the associates acknowledge there are another set of people — people who read The Economist, people who listen to podcasts like this one, the same people whose careers are made or broken based on data-backed argumentation around the optimum height of stacks of yellow bins — a distant set of people who nevertheless care.

This type of job, the type where you get to think about how to optimize things, has always appealed to me since I was very young. My parents often tell a story from when I was three years old, where I sat at the bottom step in our house in Taiwan rubbing my right hand palm down on our dusty linoleum floor for reasons long since forgotten. When my dad came by to call me for dinner, he asked that I first wash my hands. I instead tried silent negotiation, showing him my still-pristine left hand clean enough to eat with. My parents see this anecdote as an early indicator of my lifelong attraction to loopholes. I see it as the beginning of a life spent obsessively optimizing. I’ve always been the type of person who starts the microwave before washing my hands if both need doing, because I can finish washing my hands entirely within the time the microwave is running. I get annoyed at supermarket checkout lines because they’re designed to make it possible, perhaps even likely, for you to bet the wrong horse. You could find yourself behind someone who changes his mind about three different items after they’re rung up, then decides to write a check. It makes no sense to have 12 independent lines, any of which could feature a slowpoke. Instead, lines should start as one single line for everyone who wants to check out, splitting only at the very last step towards whichever cashier is next open. By doing so, you take the element of undeserved misfortune out of everyone’s grocery experience. You can tell by how long I’ve gone on about this that the entire world, everywhere, seems woefully unoptimized to me, and that I’d likely appreciate a job where someone asked me one morning how high a stack of yellow Amazon bins should be if they’re to be safely reachable by most associates while maximizing the amount of goods that can be moved by a single robot.

“Everyone has to get properly trained on each PIT machine separately.” [Forklift goes by, with the block caption PIT TRAINING AVAILABLE]. I don’t know what pit refers to, but driving a forklift, learning how to crank its spinny flat metal steering wheel and drive backwards as confidently as a Seattle Underground tour guide walks, is certainly something I’d like to do. I want to learn how to operate machinery heavy enough to be disqualified by all sorts of medication. “You do not pay for your certification.” This good news is reinforced simultaneously by block letters that nearly cover its speaker: YOU DO NOT PAY FOR YOUR CERTIFICATION. I consider the many free classes offered to me at Microsoft and Facebook for professional and personal development: classes on new technologies, classes on communication and persuasion, classes on yoga and meditation. Microsoft had even once sent me to Paris for a week of leadership training. It did not occur to me, until this video, that it’d be considered a benefit not to have to pay for getting taught how to operate a device that’s essential to the job.

“The shifts here are 10-hour shifts. You’re either on nights or you’re on days and then we have three days off.” Four 10-hour shifts in a seven-day week; three days off; the math all checks out. I’ve already decided I want a day shift.

“9 time [sic] out of 10 you’re going to come back starting your work week rejuvenated.” I like this euphemistic spin on things. “Rejuvenated” is such a better way to say, “You’re going to need a few days off after what you experience every week.” But they don’t gild the lily — they acknowledge you can’t possibly be “rejuvenated” 100% of the time when coming back to work. As all this rejuvenation talk goes on, various faces of associates pan by, including a young Asian man. I’m going to fit in here after all. “Our work here at Amazon is always going to be steady and fast paced. You don’t have to come in and do the same thing every single day. The more stuff you learn here, the more potential you have to grow into other departments, or even management. It don’t have to be a boring day — you just make fun out of it.” You tell it, girl. This video is amazing, and the job is exactly what I’m looking for.

I look briefly through the rest of the page. Neat little icons at the bottom of the job page tell me “some of [my] duties & responsibilities may include: receive and put away inventory, get customer orders ready and pack them up, load boxes onto trucks for shipment, use scanners to read bar codes on boxes, view prompts on screens and follow directions for some tasks, troubleshoot problems (this one has a magnifying glass with an exclamation in place of Sherlock’s preternaturally large eye — these aren’t just problems, these are exciting problems, challenging problems, problems that will boggle at first but ultimately succumb to your investigative prowess), ensure product meets quality requirements, operate Power Industrial Trucks (PIT! It’s an acronym! I’m definitely getting my certification, the certification I don’t have to pay for, and I’m going to operate the crap out of these power industrial trucks), and work at heights up to 35 feet (training provided).”

The video, the icons, the testimonials — it all reinforces my conviction to apply. I click the blue button that says “Fulfillment center jobs near you” and get started.

—

There are 50 shifts to choose from in the Amazon warehouse based in Kent, Washington, 20 miles south of downtown Seattle. They’re shown in a disorganized jumble of combinatorics that mash hours in the day, like 6:30pm - 5am, with various sets of four days in a week, like Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri. Each shift features a tantalizing blue bar at the top declaring “Bonus $3000.”

The application is really straightforward. Name, address, mobile phone number, and a few other vitals. There’s a section that asks you for your social security number in order to conduct “Non-fair credit reporting.” I’m pretty sure they — the same They that came up with the word “associate” instead of ”worker” — wouldn’t have put things in exactly those terms. “Non-fair” credit reporting must be some government-required terminology. I don’t like that it’s unfair. In fact, it sounds like a pretty bad idea. But what am I going to do? Like the 14-page End User License Agreement that you must “optionally” sign before you can access the $300 copy of Microsoft Office you bought, what are you going to do — read, or much less reject, this non-fair credit reporting? I want this job. If non-fair credit reporting is required in order for me to be considered, then have at it — violate fairness to whatever degree you need to. I digitally sign my acceptance and continue.

The only other question that gives me pause is the one about felony convictions. I’ve only ever been asked that one other time in life, when I applied for a weekend job at Jamba Juice in Redmond, Washington. “Name”. Easy. “Previous work experience.” Microsoft. Actually not previous, but current. I had felt my day job was getting too abstract, pushing ones and zeros onto CDs printed in warehouses, writing performance reviews for employees who I suspected didn’t much care one way or the other what I said. I wanted something hands on, something tangible. Steve Ballmer used to talk a lot about “delighting customers,” but I was pretty sure that I’d get much more delight, immediately, by setting a 28-ounce, 900-calorie Razzmatazz into the adoring hands of a six year old on weekends. “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” I hadn’t been aware enough back then to worry a bit about this question — not for myself, but for the fact that convictions have disproportionately affected some groups, specifically people of color, more than others. I now wonder what Amazon’s policy is around this, since they, too, ask. But years ago for Jamba, I simply checked No without a moment’s pause and handed the form back to the staff amidst the whirring sound of many nearby blenders creating liquid bliss.

I waited for weeks to be called back. The Jamba Juice taunted me with its bold sign on subsequent visits, declaring that they’re hiring — still! And yet no call. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t have at least interviewed me. What question could possibly have been disqualifying? I had no prior convictions. My name and address are unremarkable. The questionnaire had barely anything else on it. Except the bit about prior employment. Microsoft. “Current wage?” $62.50 an hour. Truthful. But perhaps too truthful. So truthful perhaps as to be misinterpreted as cruel mockery, at a time when WA State minimum wage was $7.16. I wouldn’t be making that mistake again, eliminated before I even got started. Luckily, Amazon had no need to know my previous wage. The offer for Mon/Tues/Thu/Fri from 7:30am - 6pm was $18.55, take it or leave it, whatever you used to make. I was Amazon’s Private Gomer Pyle — I’d take the $18.55, no questions asked, and thank them every step of the way. I checked No, no felonies, and submitted my application.

—

The first email I received regarding the job application was right when I started the process, at 2:13pm: “Your Amazon Jobs verification code is 364756”. This allowed me to verify my email and begin answering questions around non-fair credit reporting and felonies.

At 2:14pm, a mere minute later, a second email: “Congratulations on Your Amazon Offer!” Not a joke. It took me much longer to describe the online application to you than it took me to not only complete it, but to receive the confirmed job offer.

“We’re excited to make a contingent offer to you for the Amazon Fulfillment Center Warehouse Associate position at our Kent, WA facility! This offer is confirmation that you will be Hired as an employee of Amazon.” This was way too easy. Perhaps I had been trained by my Jamba Juice experience to doubt myself. Perhaps I expected an interview, or maybe some questions about my background and experiences. I certainly didn’t expect this: a job offer in about the time it took to watch the energizing recruiting video (which clocked in at all of 1:20). I read on.

“The starting pay for this position is $18.55 per hour. …entry level roles for all lines of business offer a base pay range from $15-$19.25/hr.” I had not only secured a job offer in record time; I had also managed to bag an hourly wage near the top of the range without any past experience and without any real qualifications to speak of. “You are also eligible for a $3,000 sign-on bonus for this position.” Yes! The coveted $3,000 bonus prominently emblazoned across the shift that I signed up for. My excitement dulled a bit once I realized $3000 is one entire month’s wage when earning $18.55/hr — this bonus surely has strings attached. I’d later learn you need to work there 6 months before you receive the bonus. The average employee quits in 8 months.

“Our commitment to becoming Earth’s Best Employer means we are offering top-notch pay, benefits, and career advancement opportunities.” Here “Earth’s Best Employer” is capitalized, as this superlative honorific rightly should be. From the most tarnished employer since Walmart to Earth’s Best Employer in a few short years — this is exactly why I was so excited to become an associate, to personally witness this remarkable transformation.

“Your employment is not for a fixed term and is “at will”, meaning that either you or Amazon have the right to end the employment relationship at any time, with or without cause and with or without prior notice or warning.” This last bit is great. They’ve initiated the conversation to Define the Relationship. It’s exactly what I want, a short stint through Peak: enough time to experience it for myself, with the mutual expectation that I could walk away at a moment’s notice.

—

With offer letter in hand, obtained effortlessly in a surprising two minutes online, the only remaining requirement was that I appear at the Amazon warehouse in Kent, WA to show documents required by the US government’s I-9 and to submit to a drug test.

I speed out the door navigating towards the address given in email: 21005 64th Ave S in Kent, Washington. Google Maps estimates I’ll arrive at 3:22, 8 minutes before my designated meeting time expires. I route through side streets as it directs, avoiding highways crowded with afternoon traffic, all the while monitoring the continually-updating estimated time of arrival. Every delay jeopardizes my on-time arrival to the first meeting with my new employer. Every shortcut and gain in time feels like a small victory.

I pull in to the parking lot of a small office building at 3:22, relieved to have arrived with a few minutes to spare. I rush to the door of the building only to find a large printed sign stuck to its window: “This is a Boeing building. This is not the place for Amazon interviews.” Brownie points for telling me before I embarrassed myself entering the building. Demerits for not following up with how to actually get there.

I had arrived at the address Amazon gave me, so it was unclear what to do next. How was I going to find the right place in the next few minutes? I frantically load Google Maps and start zooming in and out randomly near me. I spot a huge building labeled “BFI4 Amazon Distribution Center.” It had the word Amazon on it; perhaps I could drive there and hope someone inside could point me in the right direction.

The parking lot at BFI4 is humongous. The building itself is six football fields long. Luckily, a sign out front indicates Recruiting with an arrow. I park quickly and run to the door. 3:26 — made it in the nick of time, a mere four minutes before who knows what would happen.

I enter a room which can best be described as a processing area much like most DMVs. On the way in, I pass a security guard and wonder what exactly goes on in here… what sort of recruiting office needs security? I suspect I’m merely experiencing white-collar befuddlement. Perhaps applications for this blue collar job can turn contentious; perhaps arguments can break out about forms, required documentation, or drug tests. Or maybe, just maybe, fisticuffs result from being shut out of the job opportunity when you arrive at this building, which is completely at the wrong place relative to the address you were sent, a minute or more late to your appointment.

There’s white linoleum on the floor, interspersed with color stickers declaring safe spots to stand during COVID. Three women sit behind counters, enveloped by thick plastic protective barriers like bank tellers or passport officers. The room is built for much higher occupancy, complete with those waist-high stretchy barriers that airports love to use to direct TSA lines. But at the moment, only two others are in the room. A lady is standing at one desk loudly asking about operating hours and what to do next, as her counter-height dog waits quietly next to her. “Oh, so I come back after I fill out the application? After 4?” I hear her say. This surprises me, an inveterate rule-follower, in that it suggests she showed up to the recruitment office without even having applied, as if we stood outside factory gates during the Great Depression shouting some variant of, “Me! Pick me!” as the foreman eyes each of our physiques in turn, looking for the hardiest. Next to her in the second line is a teenager I can only describe as Jay without Silent Bob from a Kevin Smith movie: leaned over the counter, long hair spilling out from his beanie, black hoodie and cargo pants connected to a chain leading into his pocket, where I can only assume you’d find a wallet that’d appreciate, say, $18.55 an hour. It seems that he did apply beforehand, unlike the lady with the dog who’s now exiting the building. Jay finishes talking to the recruiter and departs with a gait that could nearly be described as jaunty, leaving me little doubt he’s secured himself some sort of sweet night shift that makes me mildly envious. With Jay out of the way, the recruiter who was helping him turns to her coworker at the last desk and says, “My eyes are watering. I’m allergic to dogs.” Her coworker — let’s call her Sylvia — mumbles something sympathetic about perhaps using the break room, but the allergic woman boldly soldiers on. “The damage is done,” she says with resignation.

Sylvia turns to me and motions me towards her desk. This, I would soon learn, is one key difference between my past experiences securing a job vs. the current one. When being interviewed for tech jobs, you’re offered drinks and doted over; you might even grab lunch with some of the staff. When I interviewed with Facebook, I had lunch with both the current CTO as well as the recently-announced future CTO as they shared their vision for the company and answered my questions. In contrast, by the time I’m done with today’s appointment, I will have interacted with at least four employees in the Amazon Jobs Team, each of whom treats the applicants much as TSA agents treat travelers. There are hand signals and grunts when you don’t stand in the right place. Curt commands punctuated by bouts of ennui are the order of the day.

But Sylvia is nice to me. I stand at attention in front of her desk as she asks for my identification. She opens my record on her computer. I follow her eyes as she scans the information, her visage slowing morphing from a prim, skeptical politeness to a look of being begrudgingly impressed. Not at my background, of course; she could only possibly know my name, birth date, the fact that I don’t object to non-fair credit reporting, and that I’m not a felon. She looks up finally and voices an explanation: “You’ve actually completed all the requirements! Even uploaded your badge photo, which I’ve just approved.” Despite wanting to keep cool, I beam with pride. “You’re looking at the next employee of the month,” I want to say, but instead merely set my driver’s license and social security card on the table precisely where little faint outlines indicate conscientious applicants should. Sylvia nods approvingly at my obvious desire to please, clicks her mouse a few times, and gives me permission to take back my IDs. She hands me a sheet of paper with more instructions. “Take this to the last room on the left down the hall to do your drug test.” She barely has time to finish that sentence when it’s time to turn back to her allergic coworker and continue what conversations occur during lulls in the flow of applicants.

My disappointment at her quick dismissal of me is interrupted by the more self-respecting side of me that slaps me back into the present. Why do I need her approval so much anyway? If all goes well in the coming years, I hope to never see her again. But this need for approval, the need to have everyone around me, even strangers, like me and see me as smart, responsible, and accomplished, has been omnipresent since early childhood. My parents, steeped in Chinese culture, were always more likely to criticize than to praise, fearing, as many Chinese parents do, that any praise would deflate the child’s innate motivation to forever seek its parents’ approval. You could say in my case that my parents’ well-intentioned approach succeeded stupendously. I grew to be an adult who would strive to excel at most things, with an unquenchable drive towards measurable achievements. The blind pursuit of career achievement had not filled the hole in my psyche that needed approval. Instead, I had become a man permanently propelled by that insatiable need. As with other addictions, each achievement at first leads to a thrilling high. Soon, you discover you need bigger achievements to reach those same highs; “commonplace” achievements simply won’t do. When this goes on long enough, you crave achievements just to get back to zero. It becomes normal to go above-and-beyond at all times, to the point where you find yourself trying to please a disinterested recruiter you’ll never see again with timely and adept placement of various forms of identification onto her table. You find yourself mildly ashamed to be gratified by her all-too-briefly approving countenance.

I look above her head where on the blank white wall is printed in foot-high letters, “Learn and Be Curious.” I can definitely do that. Elsewhere throughout the room are other foot-high letters. “Dive Deep.” I’m ready. “Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit.” Now I recognize what’s going on. “Disagree and commit” is an Amazon principle that even those outside the company in the software industry have heard of — it’s about valuing and committing to a unified team direction even when you disagree. These huge statements plastered throughout the room must be Amazon principles. “Frugality” — yes, this principle is one that Amazon is famous for. In this particular case, I see its relevance quite clearly in the wage they’re offering. I snap out of my reverie as Sylvia turns to me without even pausing her conversation with her allergic coworker to give me a look that very clearly shouts, “Bias for Action,” another Amazon principle. I quickly start my way down the hall.

—

I enter the drug testing room to discover 8 testing booths each partitioned by clear plexiglas as a COVID measure. I wonder why they chose to use clear partitions because I fully expected, and am quietly a little excited, to pee in a cup. I had never been drug tested before and secretly yearned to be actively monitored by an official who’d discreetly perform their job of visually monitoring — responsibly, though not too eagerly — the act of urination so as to prevent me from surreptitiously substituting some squeaky-clean friend’s urine for my own. But this moment of intimate inspection into possible transgression was not to be, as I soon learn from the test tube handed to me that the test would be oral, salivary.

In my testing booth sits an Android tablet running an app with self-service video instructions. I had spent two years building similar applications at Audere, a nonprofit I started 3 years ago focused on using smartphones in low income countries to improve accuracy of rapid testing. Amazon did well on aspects of their interface, like clearly informing users that they can pause the video at any point; but a poor job at other parts, like setting your expectations for what’s about to happen. The poster overhead has a warning about the dangers of swallowing test chemicals, and the emergency procedures thereby required. I was at first puzzled by why anyone would open the test tube in the kit and drink the liquid, but then I remembered that in one of Audere’s user studies, where people are observed using the software without outside guidance, someone had innocently stuck a test strip up their nose instead of using the provided Q-tip. I decided these mistakes are completely understandable after all: perhaps you, knowing that the test needs saliva, thought that the sealed test tube full of clear liquid was actually a form of salivary apéritif, something to kick start those glands into high production. Though if true, it’s unclear how a hand-written warning on the corner of a poster would be any more effective at preventing this grave error if all the videos and other signage on the tube itself weren’t enough to stop a person. In a way, it’s like the piracy warnings mandated at the beginning of every DVD — the honest people who bought the DVD don’t need to be told the maximum punishment for pirating movies; professional pirates, on the other hand, aren’t likely cowed by the warning.

I tap the Android tablet to watch the first video, which plays so loudly I’m self conscious about disturbing the other three applicants in the room. I whisk through the instructions like I’m racing through a standardized test. Peel back plastic and remove tube. Done. Open test strip to reveal cotton pad, placing pad against your cheek and lower gum. I stick one end of the strip into my mouth as instructed. The other end hangs out like a giant thermometer probing for a fever. I start the 10-minute salivary timer as requested in the app. The screen shows big numbers counting down the time. I look idly around and notice a sign on the wall in front of me that encourages you during this period to “think of a favorite food.” I tilt and lean, hoping to bias what little saliva I could generate by thinking of fried rice towards the cotton pad pressed against my lower right gums. I make squeezing motions with my cheeks hoping to coax my saliva glands into overtime. The app tells me to look for a blue dot to develop on the side of the stick protruding from my mouth, and that some applicants, presumably the very best ones, get the coveted dot as quickly as three minutes into the process. I tilt, lean, squeeze, imagine lemons, and fruitlessly cajole my salivary glands until 8 minutes in, trying to perform but feeling disappointingly inadequate, until at last a bright cobalt blue dot shows through the little circular opening on the side of my test probe.

In the meantime, the man in the booth next door isn’t following instructions. “Have you started the timer?” barks the employee monitoring the tests. I later learn the monitor’s name is Darnell based on a rather formal email from Amazon with the subject “Your Amazon Chain of Custody and Drug Test Consent Forms.” (Here I should pause to say that I’ve changed the names of all people mentioned only by first name in this podcast in order to protect their privacy). I glance over at the irascible Darnell and decide after perfunctory inspection that it’s for the best, after all, that he’s not instead peering at my, or for that matter anyone’s, groin to ensure that testable fluids were truly exiting urethras as opposed to, say, Ziploc bags covertly sequestered in shorts. “You haven’t started it. You’ll need to start all over.” The reprimanded applicant looks dejected and mumbles an apology. I wonder if he’ll ultimately make it so that we could one day meet somewhere in BFI4, this third-of-a-mile long warehouse, and laugh with each other about the time when he didn’t follow Precisely The Instructions and nearly got kicked out altogether.

I meekly and diligently follow the remaining instructions from the Android tablet. Snap the cotton pad off into the test tube. Do not touch the pad! Do not touch or spill the liquid! Replace the cap securely onto the tube, peel the big sticker band off your instruction sheet, and affix the sticker band carefully over the tube’s cap. The screen and video show me how to do this. The poster in front of me shows me again how, this time complete with photos of how not to as well, photos clearly X’d out with big red X’s that say, without needing words, “This is how people who did NOT become associates did their stickers.” 10-4, I copy loud and clear. With trembling hands I affix the sticker precisely as instructed, its twin barcodes cascading from the cap down each side of the test tube. The tube then went in a clear plastic bag which also featured very specific instructions, repeated again on aforementioned poster, on how to close and seal the bag. I do so precisely, and timidly ask Darnell where to place the final product. His stern countenance softens as he likely realizes moments after the fact that I had, out of both fear of failure and an insatiable need to please, addressed him as “Sir.” He rather politely tells me to place the bag in the bright yellow bin labeled “Completed Tests,” begins to ask me to wipe down my test area with the moist disinfectant towelettes prominently located in every booth, but changes his mind and offers to clean it himself. I leave the room quickly lest any other infraction jeopardize my job offer, wondering only briefly in a moment of paranoia whether I had recently consumed any poppyseed muffins. Poppyseed, I’m told, triggers false positive tests for opiates.

I traverse past the lobby and toward the exit, where I’m confronted with a floor-to-ceiling security turnstile, the type where twelve huge bars swing on a spindle past twelve fixed bars, interlaced in a way where you hope never to absentmindedly catch and pinch a limb. I wonder, as with the security guard, why this is necessary, especially not as a means to keep people out, but seemingly as a means to lock them in. Was there perhaps some sort of risk of applicants prematurely fleeing the drug test? This is just the first of what turns out to be many questions which will remain unanswered over the coming weeks.

—

I had now completed all the prerequisites for the job and was cleared to start work on November 15th, a week before Thanksgiving and nearly two weeks before Amazon’s Peak season. Other than delivering newspapers as a twelve year old, this was by far the easiest job to land in my life, needing no interview and no prior work experience, requiring only the legal right to work in America and the ability to salivate on command. After more than two decades of being a customer and tens of thousands in purchases, I was excited to officially start as an Amazonian — this really is what they call themselves — and to see how the sausage is made.

Join me in the next episode as I get ready for my first day as an Amazon associate and begin the onboarding process, which goes just fine until, suddenly, it takes a surprise turn.